In linguistics, the catena (English pronunciation: /kəˈtiːnə/, plural catenas or catenae; from Latin for "chain") is a unit of syntax and morphology, closely associated with dependency grammars. It is a more flexible and inclusive unit than the constituent and may therefore be better suited than the constituent to serve as the fundamental unit of syntactic and morphosyntactic analysis. While the catena concept has been applied mainly to the syntax of English, other works are also demonstrating its applicability to the syntax and morphology of other languages.